The toughest rat around

I had just beat one of my duffel bags for half an hour with a shoe and the rat inside was still alive when Rahema knocked on my door. For a while I had thought about letting him out and letting him run away while I shouted, “okay...okay little buddy that was impressive.” But I'd only poison him later. I really didn't want him breeding more superrats in my kitchen. So I opened up the zipper a sliver and dropped in two pieces of poisoned banana and closed it with the luggage lock.

I had also considered inviting one of the boys from the dormitory to open up the bag and hack him to death with a hoe. But the duffel bag is where I keep my emergency stash of packets of cheap gin. No, the real solution was the poison. I'd thrown another shoe at him that morning several times, chasing him out of his hiding place first by whipping a bright african-print cloth at where I thought he was. But he'd only run back into my spare bedroom and into the duffel bag and I'd had to go to parade at school. The poison or a cat. I'd gotten a cat for a few months and he had been great. He'd killed five rats that I'd seen him eat (and one song bird that he'd chased all over my living room and finally devoured under my couch because I gave up on chasing him out). But he'd lost an eye and subsequently his life probably to one of the mangy, wild dogs circling my house at night. It hadn't felt right to replace him and I was still insisting to Mama Benny that he'd probably just gone to Dar es Salam to greet his parents.

But I picked up the duffel bag and threw it into the back part of my courtyard where no one ever goes but me and let Rahema in.

Rahema is one of my favorite students on campus. We met when I took her to the Iringa girl's conference a few months before and she was the girl who had taken her role as “peer educator” most seriously. Also, for some reason I like that she calls me teacher and not madam, which even after eleven months still makes me feel like I run a whorehouse instead of an advanced physics classroom. She is the student in charge of the food for the boarding students, one of the loudest talkers I have ever met and almost comically fat and short. I am allowed to say that because 1. Tanzanians think of “fat” as a descriptive word like any other and not an insult and 2. her only comment on my photo album was that I had really gotten fat since coming to Tanzania. She presented it as a reason that I should stay in Tanzania forever.

She came in and we sat on the floor. No one sits on my furniture. I am not sure how it's possible or why it's true but it's infinitely more comfortable to spread the cushions on the floor and recline on them. I like to think of this as lending a certain urban and bohemian ambiance to my house. I like to think it makes the mat that is printed to look like tile and the scattered buckets and cardboard boxes used as actual containers seem intentional and ironic.

She wanted to talk about the life skills club we've been trying to start with limited success and our plans for it over the break. Mostly we just look at my photo album and talk about how things are going for her at school. But we do decide to postpone anymore meetings until after the midterm exams and then she presented the idea that we could do something for the form four graduation ceremony, like a song or a skit. I said I'd get her space in the schedule for it and help her choreograph it.

Then we walk up to the football game together and sit on an old dead log and watch the boys play. We talk about her future and what she plans to do in A-level and afterward. We talk about America and her tribe the Wabena. And then we walk back a little before the game ends because she needs to check on the food in the kitchen and I need to get back and start cooking and heating my bathwater.

Rahema is everything that I hope the next generation of Tanzanian women is. She is not exactly a radical departure from the culture and she's the opposite of the archetypal revolutionary. If she went to Hogwarts instead of Sadani Secondary she would be in Hufflepuff for sure, not Gryffindor. But she's incredibly smart and motivated, especially for someone her age. And she's outspoken and strong in this way that frankly leaves me speechless. She knows how to command the men around her in a way that doesn't make them resent her, but love her. She is going to be a great wife and an even better mother someday. I don't think that Rahema would ever burn her bra but I hope she raises daughters who do.

The next morning the rat is still alive (too smart to eat the bananas) so I carry the duffel bag out to the road and let it run out into the bushes, hoping its too far for it come back to my house.

Photos since the last post

Tumaini and the girls from the dormitory cook for a party we had. That first big pot is just a huge vat of oil that not a single thing we ate didn't go into.

This is the party we were cooking for above. Couldn't figure out how to work my camera but I like this picture. The woman whose face you can see is my adorable secondmaster's wife Mama Grayson.

Grayson is just the cutest. Especially when he wears this coat when it's like 70 degrees out.

My livingroom!

View out my door into the courtyard.

This is what my window looked like a couple of months ago. There is now corn as high as an elephants eye all the way down to the river.

Just rubbing it in a little bit...

The view from my door looking out towards the school.

My courtyard. The door goes to my kitchen and back behind the wall are my bathroom and toilet.

More of the Sadani Secondary School.

Every morning the whole school lines up around the flagpole to do parade and sing the national anthem.

The staff offices

More of the staff offices

One of my classrooms. It's usually much neater but its post-finals so kind of a mess.

Again...sort of in a post-finals mess.

The front of my house seen from the school.

Hi mom and dad! Don't pretend like this post isn't just for you. No one else is REALLY interested in what my courtyard looks like and I know it. Love your guts!

Let's talk about kids...

I can't tell who is more obsessed with whom...me or the Tanzanian kids.

It takes a while to notice this specific difference because so much here is different; and pointing out one difference seems...silly. But after a while it starts to dawn on you that a huge differences between the US and TZ is the number of children.

Most people I know in my village still make a living from farming. Even the teachers here all have farms on the school property. Two kids is almost unreasonably small (not nearly enough to help with a farm) and so there are kids everywhere and they do the absolute funniest, cutest and weirdest things you can imagine. Some of the village kids, the young ones who have never seen a white person before, burst into tears when they see me. This is my least favorite. Their mothers mostly think this is hilarious and I guess I understand that it is a little funny. But, secretly, it actually does hurt my feelings.

My next-door neighbor Upendo's littlest Derek (he's one year old) was like this at first; but now we're good friends. Upendo lets me carry him on my back in a sling. Derek has the nicest smile and he loves the game "this little piggie" even if he doesn't speak Kiswahili yet, let alone English. I'm still working on my second master Robert's kid Grayson. He'll come close to me now and he doesn't scream. When he's in a good mood he'll crawl towards me and even let me touch his hands; but he won't let me pick him up. The older village kids stare at me as I walk by and shout "Mzungu! Mzungu! Mzungu!" It translates as "European" but it really just means 'white person'. If I don't respond they get together in a group and chant this at me...which can get surreal.

When we were in training I was walking with my friend Sarah. When some kids chanted "Mzungu!" at us she turned around and haughtily corrected them, saying we were "Wazungu," which means more than one white person instead of just a single white person. She is pretty much famous in my host family for this.

Tanzanian children are, as far as I can tell, the cutest kids in the world. Maybe it's because kids back home didn't pay much attention to me, but I find that I am much more interested in kids here than I ever was in the US. I smile at them; I ask them questions until they run away; I see how close I can get to them without them bursting into tears; and I coo at them in Kiswahili. Kids in the US don't stare and don't point, don't ask rude questions or shout "how are you teacher?" so quickly it sounds like one word or scream in joy and fear when you look at them.

I'm never going to like American kids after this...I've gotten used to being the most exciting things children have seen all day. I'm spoiled rotten.

Also, it should be mentioned: kids here are allowed to ride the motorcycles when they're old enough to hold on (like three years old) and I have to wear a helmet when I ride a bike. All I'm saying is that anyone who tells you that there are rules in Tanzania is lying.

Photos Galore!

(Almost) the whole gang at the Ambassador's House looking at these photos.

This is my whole host family at the going-away party. Aren't we cute? Tanzanian ceremonies are super formal and super awkward for Americans but I was glad to be with them/awkwardly feed them cake and stumble through a thank-you in Kiswahili.

Mike is asking himself the question "how much vegetable oil went into this food?" I know better. Ignorance Mike...it's bliss.

Sarah's host sister and I share a giggle.

This is my house! Just kidding...it's the ambassadors. Mine is slightly modest.

Don't we look respectable? This was the day right before I moved into a house with no electricity and running water.

Thanksgiving dinner at the Ambassador's house. After two months of rice and beans we were way more excited about the food than anything else (swearing in and meeting the US Ambassador included). Whatever...there was pumkin pie and unlimited apples.

This place is real. And they serve pumkinpie and turkey.

Swearing in! I'm a real volunteer now!

The dream team at the Embassy after swearing in. This was the group I went through training with. Sarah (on the far right) is my closest neighbor and pretty much a goddamn riot. From left to right they are Lisa, Carly, Mike, Kondo, me and Sarah.

This is my headmaster! His name is Bonus Ndimbo and he's straight up the best.

Site so Far

So I'm at site finally (a school called Sekondari ya Sadani or Sadani Secondary School) and it's lovely so far. My village is a little outside of Mafinga (and by that I mean an hours harrowing charge down a dirt road on a rickety bus) and it's charming. The list of things you can and cannot buy in my village is a little surprising. Fruit is rarity, pombe (the local beer that they brew from bananas) is a ubiquity, but salt, sugar, tea and flip-flop shoes you can almost always find in the tiny little shops that are scattered down the main road.
My house is enormous (two bedrooms and a private courtyard) but has no electricity and until the rainy season I have to carry water up from the river which is kind of a hike. I never make it up the hill with a bucket of water though...someone always comes to help me carry it part of the way. I am trying to learn to carry water on my head with no hands (for now because it's much easier and maybe the local women will stop laughing at me and for when I return to the United States because it will be an excellent party trick).
My other enormous comedy success (the struggling-to-carry-water routine is a smash hit that could basically debut in Madison Square Garden as far as the Tanzanian villagers are concerned) is the fact that I'm scared of rats and bugs. Everyday in Tanzania is a new opportunity to ask myself the question "is that the scariest bug I've ever seen?" and the answer is always "yes... until tomorrow." Yesterday I saw the biggest cockroach of my life outside the staff office during chai break. When I pointed it out to the other teachers and ran away the biology teacher picked it up and started showing me that it had all the characteristics of an insect, which was totally just an excuse to get it close enough to me so I would squirm away and the other teachers could laugh at me more...wherever my brother was at the time I'm sure he was smiling.
Since I'm teaching A-level physics(advanced level is sort of between an AP level high school physics class and the first year of a bachelor's degree: no calculus involved but some fairly advanced applications) I've already taught some classes. The students are all men, all my age or older and they all wear uniforms. They are intimidating and their English is good but not great.
I was lying to you by the way when I said I would be teaching in Kiswahili: all classes in Tanzania past primary school (when the kids are about 12) are taught in the official language of the country, English. That does not necessarily mean that the kids speak English...at least not English as you would recognize it. Here we call it "special English" and when you try to explain something like the Young's Modulus or Stress-Strain curves in it things rapidly tend towards the utterly ridiculous.
What else do you want to know about site? I love it. I'm safe. I'm happy. I'm eating a lot of rice and ugali.

Pictures from Mikumi National Park

So the weekend before last we went on safari in Mikumi National Park. This is a small selection of what I saw. My friend Mike took all these photos (fifteen minutes in it started to feel a little stupid taking photos when Mike was just leaning over my shoulder taking much better ones). I might photobucket the other photos later because Mike took a lot of great photos...

The guide said we weren't allowed off the bus to see if he wanted some friends in the watering hole. Maybe that had to do with the lions though.



The classic no-hand water carrying.



Dinner at Mikumi.

This isn't even the coolest twiga we saw...I'm just saying.

Mike says I should start a blog called 'Things I do in my Obama T-shirt.' It really was the only clean thing I had though.

Uhg this is not the photo I wanted gosh darn it. Oh well...slightly out of focus.

This place is a total snooze fest.

Cow Foot and Banana Stew

I'm always sweaty by the time I get home in the evenings. It's about a forty minute walk up Mt. Uruguru to my host family's house and (as my host father says), I walk like a solider. Anyway when I get home I put water on to warm up for my bucket bath and then I go hang out in the living room and chat with my host dad for a little bit. When I went back into the kitchen last night to get the water to shower, Josephina, my host sister, had apparently switched the water around on me. So I pull the lid off the pot I thought was my bathwater and inside are these long, white stumpy bones in a boiling mass of brown water.

Host mama, over my shoulder, goes, "do you know what that is?"

One possible answer to that question would be "something I never want to put in my mouth" and another would be "what we ate for dinner" but the most specific answer is probably a stew they make here by boiling cow hooves for five to seven hours and then adding peas and bananas. I was not happy about that but I was an adult about the situation: at dinner I pulled the hoof part off and then cut it into bites that were small enough to swallow without chewing. Still, it was bad...psychologically. It tasted like nothing so much as beef glue and I was supremely aware of the hoof nature of the whole experience.

But I wanted to start the blog with this story because really...that's it. That's like the worst thing that's happened to me so far. I had to eat a little bit of cow hoof and I wasn't happy about it. But, I mean, I liked the rest of the stew a lot. They have a way of cooking unripe bananas that make them taste like the best boiled potatoes ever and I had two of those and some awesome coconut milk and peas. And I'm really liking it here. I'm learning Kiswahili as fast as I can (nowhere near fast enough) and having a really good time.

Anyway...here are some photos to catch you up on what happened between the United States and the cow foot stew.



Jordan and Mike coming to class at the Training Site here at Morogoro where we stayed before our host families.